Saturday, 25 October 2003

Sandhill Trek: A Public Space Frank quotes Betsy quoting me at Bloggercon. Here's what I was trying to say:
The net extends the range of the power law distribution.
If you look at relative popularity on the web, using something like Technorati, you get a power law curve that goes all the way down smoothly, to the bottom where you see pages that got just a single link.
If you look at popularity in the publishing world - movies, chart music or books - the curve starts out with a power law, but soon drops like a stone.
That's because in order to get a movie made, a recording contract or a book published, you have to convince somebody that you're going to sell a million tickets, a hundred thousand CDs or tens of thousands of books.
You end up in a zero-sum game, where people pour enormous resources into being number one, because number two is only half as good. The promise of the net is that the power of all those little links can outweigh the power of the top ten.

The BBC iCan initiative is designed to help you campaign for things you want.
I want the BBC to release radio programs as MP3's instead of streams, so I can listen to them without a computer with a live net connection.

Speech radio programs don't go with using a computer to read and type.

Friday, 24 October 2003

Gary Wolf::
All of Amazon's important innovations - starting from the concept of a Web bookstore - have suggested a profound change in the bookselling business, a change that makes it possible to earn a profit by selling a much wider variety of books than any previous retailer, including many titles from the so-called long tail of the popularity curve. 'If I have 100,000 books that sell one copy every other year,' says Steve Kessel, an Amazon VP, 'then in 10 years I've sold more of these, together, than I have of the latest Harry Potter.'

Thursday, 16 October 2003

Apple and Pepsi to Give Away 100 Million Free Songs: "Apple� and Pepsi-Cola North America today announced a historic promotion to legally give away 100 million free songs to Mac� and Windows PC users from Apple's iTunes� Music Store. Beginning February 1, 100 million winning codes will be randomly seeded in 20 ounce and 1 liter bottles of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Sierra Mist, and the winning codes will be redeemable for a free song from the iTunes Music Store. "

Diary of a Pilgrimage - Part I:
What a wonderful piece of Socialism modern civilisation has become!--not the Socialism of the so-called Socialists--a system modelled apparently upon the methods of the convict prison--a system under which each miserable sinner is to be compelled to labour, like a beast of burden, for no personal benefit to himself, but only for the good of the community--a world where there are to be no men, but only numbers--where there is to be no ambition and no hope and no fear,--but the Socialism of free men, working side by side in the common workshop, each one for the wage to which his skill and energy entitle him; the Socialism of responsible, thinking individuals, not of State-directed automata.

Here was I, in exchange for the result of some of my labour, going to be taken by Society for a treat, to the middle of Europe and back. Railway lines had been laid over the whole 700 or 800 miles to facilitate my progress; bridges had been built, and tunnels made; an army of engineers, and guards, and signal-men, and porters, and clerks were waiting to take charge of me, and to see to my comfort and safety. All I had to do was to tell Society (here represented by a railway booking-clerk) where I wanted to go, and to step into a carriage; all the rest would be done for me. Books and papers had been written and printed; so that if I wished to beguile the journey by reading, I could do so. At various places on the route, thoughtful Society had taken care to be ready for me with all kinds of refreshment (her sandwiches might be a little fresher, but maybe she thinks new bread injurious for me). When I am tired of travelling and want to rest, I find Society waiting for me with dinner and a comfortable bed, with hot and cold water to wash in and towels to wipe upon. Wherever I go, whatever I need, Society, like the enslaved genii of some Eastern tale, is ready and anxious to help me, to serve me, to do my bidding, to give me enjoyment and pleasure. Society will take me to Ober-Ammergau, will provide for all my wants on the way, and, when I am there, will show me the Passion Play, which she has arranged and rehearsed and will play for my instruction; will bring me back any way I like to come, explaining, by means of her guide-books and histories, everything upon the way that she thinks can interest me; will, while I am absent, carry my messages to those I have left behind me in England, and will bring me theirs in return; will look after me and take care of me and protect me like a mother--as no mother ever could.

All that she asks in return is, that I shall do the work she has given me to do. As a man works, so Society deals by him.

To me Society says: 'You sit at your desk and write, that is all I want you to do. You are not good for much, but you can spin out yards of what you and your friends, I suppose, call literature; and some people seem to enjoy reading it. Very well: you sit there and write this literature, or whatever it is, and keep your mind fixed on that. I will see to everything else for you. I will provide you with writing materials, and books of wit and humour, and paste and scissors, and everything else that may be necessary to you in your trade; and I will feed you and clothe you and lodge you, and I will take you about to places that you wish to go to; and I will see that you have plenty of tobacco and all other things practicable that you may desire--provided that you work well. The more work you do, and the better work you do, the better I shall look after you. You write--that is all I want you to do.'

'But,' I say to Society, 'I don't like work; I don't want to work. Why should I be a slave and work?'

'All right,' answers Society, 'don't work. I'm not forcing you. All I say is, that if you don't work for me, I shall not work for you. No work from you, no dinner from me--no holidays, no tobacco.'

And I decide to be a slave, and work.

Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.

Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.

One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.

Wednesday, 15 October 2003

There's Still No Such Thing as a Web Site:
Finding the �Site� Isn�t SimpleThere�s just no way, as far as I can tell, to look at a URI and figure out what site it�s from. Some sites just aren�t hierarchical, sometimes the site isn�t rooted at the top level. For example, the root of ongoing is at http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/, but there are things that are part of ongoing that don�t start with http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ and there are things elsewhere on http://www.tbray.org/ that are part of other web sites.[...]
Grabbing Pieces of Namespace Isn't OKNow, let's assume that we could somehow find the 'root' of a web site by some magic. I just don't think it's OK now in 2003, when we're maybe 1% of the way into the Web's lifespan, to start gobbling up little bits of the namespace. As it is, the names robots.txt and favicon.ico are stolen forever, nobody will ever be able to use them for their own purposes again.

Tuesday, 14 October 2003

Danny O'Brien:In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn't. You can have a private gathering, but it isn't necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones.

Most people have, in the back of their mind, the belief that what they say to their friends, they would be happy to say in public, in the same words. It isn't true, and if you don't believe me, tape-record yourself talking to your friends one day, and then upload it to your website for the world to hear.

This is the trap that makes fly-on-the-wall documentaries and reality TV so entertaining. It's why politicians are so weirdly mannered, and why everyone gets a bit freaked out when the videocamera looms at the wedding. It's what makes a particular kind of gossip - the 'I can't believe he said that!' - so virulent. No matter how constant a person you are, no matter how unwavering your beliefs, something you say in the private register will sound horrific, dismissive, egotistical or trite when blazoned on the front page of the Daily Mirror. This is the context that we are quoted out of.

But in the real world, private conversations stay private. Not because everyone is sworn to secrecy, but because their expression is ephemeral and contained to an audience. There are few secrets in private conversations; but in transmitting the information contained in the conversation, the register is subtly changed. I say to a journalist, 'Look, Dave, err, frankly the guy is a bit, you know. Sheesh. He's just not the sort of person that we'd ever approve of hiring.'. The journalist, filtering, prints, 'Sources are said to disapprove of the appointment.'

Read the whole thing - it is deep stuff, I found to helped me think about this more clearly.

One of the reasons I find 'Trusted Computing' so mistaken is that it confuses the private and the secret, and tries to solve these problems of human trust and community with encryption technology.

Mediation via journalist is less useful than it was, especially given the the frames that they force us into.
The semi-public voice of blogs is a new kind of mediation, and a promising one.

Andrew Orlowski:
Try OS X Panther Discussion for size: it's a Google query for OS X Panther discussion. In what must be a record, Google is - at time of writing - returning empty Trackback pages as No.1, No.2, No.3 and No.4 positions. No.5 gets you to a real web page - an Apple Insider bulletin board. Then it's back to empty Trackback pages for results No.6, No.7 and No.10. In short, Google returns blog-infested blanks for seven of the top entries.

Orlowski blames this on bloggers for corrupting PageRank.

He is wrong - this is a consequence of Google giving strong weight to the <title> tag, over and above the PageRank involved. I believe they did this to reduce the alleged blog pollution he rants about interminably.

Saturday, 11 October 2003

I had a fascinating conversation with Bill Woodcock, who just got back from Tonga. Apparently in the developing world, 802.11 is taking over from GSM, as the access points are orders of magnitude cheaper.
Consequently, there are cellphones that run 802.11 and VoIP, but the customers don't know this, as the phones just work.

Routing round incumbent telcos this way is easier there - nations like Niu� and Tonga have open public wireless networks, and countries like Nigeria are growing urban-area wireless networks too, with huge zones bridging between basestations across town.

I was thinking the other day that for what I spend a month on cellphone services, I could buy a wireless basestation every month and put one every place I go.

So, the idea is to advertise local blog feeds via OPML, over Rendezvous.
Usage scenario: walk into a conference, open your Aggregator, and it shows you all the locally relevant feeds - bloggers attending the conference, a session time feed, local info feeds. You subscribe to the ones you find interesting.

Thursday, 9 October 2003

I have often pointed out that Digital Rights Management is futile. It is ineffective, and destroys the value of the content that it supposedly protects. Suncomm have sunk to a new low here:

News.com:
SunnComm Technologies, a developer of CD antipiracy technology, said Thursday that it will likely sue a Princeton student who early this week showed how to evade the company's copy protection by pushing a computer's Shift key.

Princeton Ph.D. student John 'Alex' Halderman published a paper on his Web site on Monday that gave detailed instructions on how to disarm the SunnComm technology, which aims to block unauthorized CD copying and MP3 ripping. The technology is included on an album by Anthony Hamilton that was recently distributed by BMG Music.

On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards.

Suncomm sold a product to damage CDs. Haldemann showed how to get the value back.

'We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company has been wronged,' Jacobs said. 'I think the agenda is: 'Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the marketplace.' "

The agenda is 'I want to have control of software running on my computer'. Suing for the right to install software on my computer without my permission would (I hope) be thrown out.

Mr Jacobs, it is DRM that doesn't work in the marketplace. Customers don't want to buy damaged CDs that have missing features.

My suggestion to computer manufacturers is as follows.

When the user inserts a 'protected' CD, the computer says:
"This CD appears to be damaged - it has a corrupt Table of Contents."
"Would you like to burn a corrected copy? [Eject] [Play] [Burn]"

Jeremy Allaire:
'I wrote up a proposal, which I posted on my Weblog, for a new format called RSS-Data, which would provide an ability to provide richer data in RSS feeds,' Allaire said. 'So that people who want to use RSS as a way to do syndication of information, can syndicate not just news content but they'd be able to syndicate application data as well, data from a database or object data from programs.'

How to pass around data structures without meaning. If RDF is the Semantic Web, this is the Syntactic web.

Ashley Highfield:
...future TV will may be unrecognisable from today, defined not just by linear TV channels, packaged and scheduled by television executives, but instead will resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of content, some indistinguishable as actual channels. These streams will mix together broadcasters' content and programmes, and our viewers' contributions. At the simplest level -- audiences will want to organize and re-order content the way they want it. They'll add comments to our programmes,programmes, vote on them and generally mess about with them. But at another level, audiences will want to create these streams of video themselves from scratch, with or without our help. At this end of the spectrum, the traditional 'monologue broadcaster' to 'grateful viewer' relationship will break down, and traditional advertising and subscription models will no longer be viable.

This is so close, but he is still talking about streams. If he can start thinking 'files' not 'streams' he will have the right model maped out.

TiVo's and iPods are hardware devices that customers willingly buy to turn streams into files. If they could get the files directly the whole enterprise is far simpler and more attractive.

Monday, 6 October 2003

While I was getting ready for BloggerCon, I got a call form a USA Today Journalist, who had his story angle all ready:
'So, you got fired for blogging?'
'No, it wasn't like that. I wrote an explanatory piece, why don't you read it?'

He wasn't interested in that, so I explained a bit more that Apple discourages employees from talking to the press, and that I had found new work through my blogging.

Saturday, 4 October 2003

The conference is over, so I've taken my 'bootleg feed' down. This is the problem with 'live' video - easy to do but no persistence. (Well, OK it wasn't that easy to do - I spent 2 years coding it at Apple so it could be this easy).

Being able to do a live broadcast to the world on a whim with the contents of my backpack, an ethernet cable and a friendly server in Japan is something I would not have predicted when I started working for the BBC in 1988 - especially as I was also using the same computer to share wireless connectivity with half the room, to chat with people on 3 continents, and to write and debug code in the session.

Something I said a few times at Bloggercon is that video and audio are missing the essence of blogging. You can do live video, or you can use your computer to edit together a professional-looking video presentation, but the equivalent of the 'just-in-time' publishing that blogging provide is not there.

I spoke to Jennifer Neal of VidiBlog about this - their's is a live event service, which isn't VidiBlog, it's VidiChatRoom - it may still be interesting though.

Adam Curry and I had a chat about trying something more like blogging using the RSS 'enclosures'. I have the beginnings of a tool to automatically move audio posts into iTunes (and hence iPods) as I just can't listen to speech radio at the computer - I need to do it while driving.

There are two aspects we need to solve to make this work. One is on the capture side - making this straightforward. Audblog and similar services do this, but their output is effectively voicemail in the browser, and voicemail suffers from the problem of being easier t make than to listen to.
Coming up with a new grammar for presenting video and audio in a 'skimmable' way (as Dan Bricklin put it) is going to be interesting to work out.

About Me

Kevin Marks works on IndieWeb and open web tech. From 2011 to 2013 he was VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce. From 2009 to 2010 he was VP of Web Services at BT. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 25 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in the QuickTime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in the UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer. One of the driving forces behind microformats.org, he regularly speaks at conferences and symposia on emergent net technologies and their cultural impact.